


Find the River

by kres



Series: Find the River [3]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-20
Updated: 2006-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-20 16:18:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/889309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kres/pseuds/kres
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'll be here when you wake up</p><p>[originally posted at kres.livejournal.com]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> At long last (for me, at least), here's the last part of the triptych.
> 
> Knowing the previous parts would help to navigate through this one. But not much (or so they tell me:)=
> 
> Many, many thanks to the beautiful beta-voices of [](http://paian.livejournal.com/profile)[**paian**](http://paian.livejournal.com/) and [](http://troyswann.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://troyswann.livejournal.com/)**troyswann**. {{hugs}}
> 
> Characters, as usual, belong to the creators of Stargate. Chapter quotes and story titles belong, of course, to REM.

His death is a quiet affair.

The lights in the house are out, the observation deck is empty. Next to the unfinished bottle of beer the telescope is pointing at the clear night sky. Across the street Mrs. Dawson is closing the blinds in her daughter's bedroom, and Mr. Dawson switches off the light in the garage and locks the front door. The neighborhood is going to sleep, exactly as it does every night.

Jack sits in the bedroom. His shoes are off, his shirt is buttoned up to the collar. A clean white comforter is spread across the bed. The door to the balcony is closed, the window bolted shut. Soundproof. Reliable. Familiar. Jack breathes slowly in the falling darkness. The air in the room is light and dry, filling his lungs, melting into his bloodstream, powering the thrum of life in his veins. He is alone.

The barrel of his gun is cool against his temple.

“So,” he says to Daniel. “That's how it goes then?”

Daniel doesn't respond, of course, and Jack nods to himself, a minute movement of his head. The barrel moves with him. His hand is steady, his finger aligned in its perfect spot against the trigger.

“Yeah,” Jack says quietly, the irony of the situation not lost on him, despite what Daniel might think. “That's how it goes.”


	2. Chapter 2

_river to the ocean flows,  
a fortune for the undertow._

“...and I could be made of small particles of light. I'd fly then, as far as I'd want to, and there would be no place in this world my eyes wouldn't see, not even a single corner of the world would remain unknown to me. I would...”

“Daniel?”

There is light in his eyes, and emptiness in his lungs, as if he were lying under the sky, high above the world, breathing the thinning air. Under his head there is a pillow. He tests the weight of his head, presses back; the pillow yields, but not much. He squints into the light. “Daniel?” he asks again. His mouth is dry.

“I would fly as far as I'd want to,” Daniel's voice says in a melodious monotone, a stream of fluid pouring into Jack's ears, “and the places I'd see would be beautiful as the light is beautiful. And then I would come back, and you would see me descending, pieces of light, bits of the sun, and you would reach for me and hold me and help my feet again touch the ground.”

Jack raises his hand, shields his eyes from the sun, recognizes the shape of a bed, and around it the shape of a room, with long floating waves of curtains and dark stripes of blinds. He recognizes the sweat on his skin -- hot, humid morning promising the heat of the day, a rush of people, voices, cars outside. He recognizes church bells in the distance, and nearby -- Daniel, sitting on the windowsill, in full sunlight, naked, reading a book.

Jack blinks, waits for the first wave of sweat to wash over him, cool his skin against the patches of light on the bed. His lips are dry, parched, hurting. His whole body is hurting. He swallows.

“What are you reading?” he asks. His voice is quiet, as though it, too, has dried up with the rest of his body.

Daniel turns to him, looking as if he only just realized that Jack is awake. Then he smiles, and the sun turns the smile into a blinding flash of light. Jack closes his eyes for a moment, and opens them to Daniel closing the book, laying it on the windowsill and stepping onto the floor. Light and shadow, black stripes of the closed blinds on his skin. Jack watches. Daniel comes to the bed, sits at the far end, and touches Jack's ankle, wraps his hand around it. Jack shivers, feels another wave of sweat starting at the small of his back. Daniel's hand is warm and dry, his touch slow and sure.

“I am made of light,” Daniel says, smiling slowly. “Why would I read what I already know?”

Daniel's hand is warm and dry, and it is moving up Jack's ankle, to his calf, to his knee, a strong, unyielding caress. Jack lays his palms flat on the bed, over the cool sheet, over the space that Daniel has vacated.

“I don't know,” Jack says. “You're not making any sense.”

The air is thin, blowing through the window, blowing through the curtains. Outside, the church bells ring and stop. Traffic lights, breeze from the sea, hot engine fumes, serpentines of roads. Inside, Daniel's weight moves on the bed, Daniel's hand moves to knead the muscles of Jack's thigh. Men don't touch like this, Jack thinks idly. Men don't caress like this. He dries his sweating palms on the sheet.

“Daniel, you're not making any sense to me,” he says, and watches Daniel smile and bow his head.

“Would you rather see me dress than sit on the window like that?” Daniel asks, moving closer, leaning low, laying his cheek against Jack's hipbone. The bed dips as Daniel's body shifts. “Would you rather see me close myself in a dark room than show myself to the sunlight like that?”

Daniel's cheek is warm against Jack's skin. Daniel's breath is stirring the hair at Jack's groin. Men don't touch like this, Jack thinks. Men don't caress like this. Men touch in friendship, hands and arms and laughter until your lungs burst with happiness, and your stomach hurts from the food and the drink. Men touch in anger, fists and bones, steel and wood and the hard sound of a gun, until the pain blurs everything or your hand and your arm and your mind are once again truly and only your own.

But men don't caress like this. _Daniel_ doesn't caress like this. Daniel cries out and cowers and then lies still, waiting for the violence to pass, for the pain to be over. Daniel isn't hurt by the pain. Daniel is made of light, and light can't really be hurt. Can't be touched.

Jack fists the sheet in his hands. “I'm not your keeper, Daniel,” he says. His throat is tight, and his breath is getting shallow; he is getting out of breath. The stripes of sunlight are razors of heat on his face. “You're free to do what you want. You've always been. I could never stop you.”

Daniel is silent, breathing slowly against Jack's skin. Time passes, the hum of the city outside filling the silence. After a while Jack thinks that Daniel has fallen asleep, but then Daniel stirs, moves his head closer to Jack's groin.

“Rest now,” he says. Then he leans in and licks Jack slowly, a warm touch of lips and tongue, not unlike a kiss, and he moves up, touches his mouth to Jack's belly, grazes his teeth along Jack's ribs. “I'll be with you.” His hand pulls the edge of the sheet and he covers them both with the cool, thin shield of linen.

“They won't hurt you any more,” Daniel says. His voice is quiet, the sheet is a fog, is milk, is a veil on Jack's face. “I'm here.”

Jack closes his eyes.

~*~

“Talk to me, sir! Please, talk to me!”

The sheet is a fog, is milk, is a veil on his face. The touch is a caress, is a hand, is fingers boring into his biceps, clawing into his skin.

“Sir, are you with us?!”

The air is thin, is dry, is sweet, is a liquid clogging his throat, is blood congealing in the back of his throat.

“For god's sake, sir, _talk to me_!”

He coughs. Then he coughs some more, and he keeps coughing, and then he rears up in the whiteness, hands searching blindly, finding bed, finding sheets, finding clothing, finding arms, gripping wrists, pulling.

Carter's terrified face is inches from his own when he opens his eyes.

For a moment she looks too stunned to speak, and then her face breaks into a desperate smile. “Sir, you're okay, oh, thank god you're okay...” There is an overwhelming relief in her voice, but there is also panic in her eyes. Jack recognizes it well in the close-up. He lets go of her wrists.

“Carter?” He pulls back. His head is swimming, but he has to, he needs to look around.

They are in a room -- in _the_ room, he realizes, still in that _fucking white room_ \-- but the walls are somehow far away, the shapes of the furniture indistinct. He can't see anything but a blur where the edges should be.

“He's not okay, Sam. Far from it.”

Carter moves aside and another face swims into his field of vision. Light in his eye. Flashlight. He blinks. “Daniel?”

A hand touches his face, holds his chin up. The flashlight blinds him again. And then there is darkness, afterimages dancing before his eyes, and the hand is touching his shoulder, squeezing.

“Yes, Jack. It's me. Now let's get out of here.”

~*~

They meet in a library...

“Outside a library,” Jack says, leaning against the back of the couch.

“What?” Daniel frowns at him. They are watching this reality together. Daniel is narrating.

“Outside a library,” Jack says. He reaches over Daniel's arm, takes the bag with the popcorn. “I don't go to libraries,” he says. “If I were to meet you, it would be outside a library. You'd be going out...” he waves a hand, drawing a shape in the air, “blind, dusty, blinking at the bright lights...”

“Okay then,” Daniel says, setting two bottles of beer on the coffee table. “Outside. But it's evening, not day. I wouldn't leave the library until it was dark.”

Jack nods. He is chewing the popcorn. _The snow is falling slowly onto the empty sidewalk. Daniel is standing by the tall, wooden door, pulling his coat around his body. It's freezing; Jack can feel the cold in his bones. The snowflakes are thin, glittering, single crystals settling on Daniel's cheeks, melting to silver droplets of light._

_“Need a ride?” Jack says, opening the window of his car, on the passenger side._

Daniel grimaces. “That's the lamest pick-up line I've heard since high school.” He takes back the popcorn and passes Jack a beer. “I've seen you do better, Jack.”

“What's the point?” Jack says, taking the bottle. “You would get into the car anyway.” He takes a pull. “You hate the cold.”

 _The car door slams._ Jack's breath catches, and he inhales a mouthful of beer. “Son-of-a-... _crap_... Daniel...”

“Hey. Easy.” Daniel slaps him on the back. “Easy now.”

“Daniel...” The beer stings. Jack coughs, and keeps coughing. The beer is sweet, is sharp, is nauseating, and the heel of the hand is hard on his back.

“Easy now, sir. We're almost out.”

“Daniel...”

“He's here, sir. We're all here. Please, just a few more steps... Teal'c, dial us home.”

“With pleasure, Major Carter.”

Jack falls.

~*~

Where they meet in a library.

The sidewalk glitters with freshly-fallen light. The snow crunches under Daniel's boots; Jack can feel the sound of it in his teeth.

At the edge of the sidewalk Daniel stops, pulls his coat tighter around his body, a hunched scarecrow in the dark of the night. Jack slows down, the car slides -- ice under the thin, soft layer of snow -- and rolls to a stop. Daniel looks up from his watch, but Jack knows the bus won't be coming this way for a couple of minutes. Not worth the wait, anyway.

“Need a ride?” Jack says, opening the window of his car, on the passenger side.

Daniel shivers visibly, checks his watch again, but the decision has already been made; it's as simple as that. Jack opens the car door, and Daniel gets in. He smells of dust and coffee and old books, and all things warm and pleasant and sweet. Jack inhales deep, and then releases the clutch and takes a turn away from the curb.

“You live around here?”

Daniel is rubbing his hands together. No gloves. His fingers are long, angular, neat.

“Yes. A couple of blocks. Round the corner and to the right. Thanks. You?”

“I've got a house in the suburbs. Close by.” They turn the corner. The car skids a little. “Do you want to see it?”

A beat. Daniel stops rubbing. Jack stops breathing. His hands hold the wheel, but he's not paying attention any more. Outside, the world glitters. Snowflakes are settling on the windshield, the wipers sweep them off.

Daniel turns his head, looks at Jack. Then he laughs, openly, softly.

“I'm not very good at this, you know,” he says, and on the surface it's light, it is meant to be light, but Jack recognizes the shiver in Daniel's voice.

“You'll do fine,” he says, and turns left.

~*~

He turns left. Daniel is looking out the window. Streetlights pass them by. Jack switches on the radio, lets the music flow; some soft jazz -- bass, trumpet, guitar...

“...okay, Sam. Go home. I'll stay with him.”

“You need to rest, too, Daniel. There's no telling when...”

Voices flow from the radio, come to Jack, flow over him, drown him and then float into the quiet before he can catch them.

“I'm fine. I'll be fine. Please go. Get some sleep.”

Voices. Machines. Low lights, quiet beeping. Infirmary? Jack opens his palm, fingers the sheet. Rough, stiff, mattress below, cool frame of the bed on one side. Yes, infirmary at last. He relaxes into the voices, into the steady beeping of the machines. There's a radio on, somewhere down the corridor. And there's Carter's whisper, close by, flowing back to him, slipping into his half-dreaming.

“...were there the longest. It could hit you at any time. We don't know when, we can't predict how strong it will be. I need to...”

“There are doctors on watch, Sam. They'll look after me. They'll look after Jack.”

Daniel's voice is quiet, steady, sure. Is he keeping his hands in his pockets, or is he touching Carter on the shoulders, reassuring her with the touch? Jack doesn't know. He doesn't seem to have the will to open his eyes just yet.

“We will be here tomorrow. You'll see us then. Don't worry.”

“But Daniel...”

“Sam. Please. I need...”

There's a pause, a shuffling of feet. Jack listens. The machines measure his heart rate, his blood pressure, tick away seconds of his life. The radio plays. The IV drips into his vein.

Daniel inhales. Jack feels the intake of breath like a shiver across his skin. Glittering snowflakes on the windowpane.

“I need to be alone with him for a while.”

Jack drifts.

~*~

He drifts, he stops, he turns the engine off. The key jingles, the cold sweeps into the car, the door slams, and slams again as Daniel goes out. Their boots scrunch on the snow, slide on the sidewalk. Daniel catches Jack's arm for support. He holds on to Jack until they are both on the front porch.

This is not how it happens.

“Would you take me in, from the street, like that?”

Daniel leans against Jack's shoulder, takes his beer, takes the last pull and sets the empty bottle on the floor. Behind them the seat of the couch supports their heads; the coffee table has been moved out of the way to make space for their legs. Jack curls his fingers loosely around Daniel's right kneecap, rubs lightly through the jeans.

“You were lost,” he says. There's a piece of popcorn between his teeth. He's been trying to push it out with his tongue for a while now. No give.

“I wasn't lost.” Daniel says, covering Jack's hand with his own. His fingers are cool from the bottle. He begins to stroke Jack's knuckles with his thumb. “I'd been reading.” He leans even closer to Jack, props his chin on Jack's shoulder. His breath is warm on Jack's skin, his whisper tickles Jack's ear. “You know I tend to forget where I am when I'm reading.”

Jack stops rubbing, squeezes Daniel's knee. Bone and sinew. Solid, human body. Daniel's fingers tighten around his hand in response.

“I know, Daniel,” Jack says. “You tend to forget everything.”

~*~

This is not how it happens.

The stairs are slippery, the railing is crusted with snow. The metal bites, sticks to Jack's fingertips, but then the door is opened and they're in the hallway, breathing in the warm, dusty air. Jack steps to the side, reaches in the darkness to flip on the light switch.

Daniel catches his wrist.

“No, ” he says, and smiles, a blue flicker of teeth in the faint light from the snow and the streetlamps. “It's warmer like this.”

Jack doesn't switch on the light. He closes the front door, turns the key in the lock, and moves closer to Daniel. They stand in the darkness for a little while, each of them in their own, warm pocket of space. Jack leans slightly towards Daniel, inhaling the warmth and the smell of his body.

He breathes Daniel in for a very long time, acquainting himself with Daniel's scent, filling all the little cells in his reptilian brain that associate smell with memory. Daniel's face is barely visible in the darkness, and his eyes are closed. He doesn't move, doesn't say anything; he lets Jack take his fill of breathing. Finally he turns his head to the side, baring his throat to Jack, and Jack's need spikes sharply at the sight of this quiet, gentle submission. He steps closer, brushes the collar of Daniel's jacket with his fingers. “Take it off,” he says quietly. “Take it all off.” His mouth feels like sandpaper.

Daniel doesn't protest. Wordlessly he begins undressing in the darkness, layers after layers after layers of clothes coming off; jacket, shirt, undershirt; boots, socks, pants. Jack watches him, fingering the zipper of his own jacket. He doesn't make a move to open it, he doesn't make a move to take off his boots. He stands there and watches Daniel undress.

When Daniel is naked, Jack reaches for him, hands clasping Daniel's shoulders, pulling him closer, pulling him close enough for their bodies to touch. Daniel lets himself be pulled, then leans obediently against Jack, and Jack inhales again, the scent heavy and strong the warmth of Daniel's body, the sweat on Daniel's skin; a powerful imprint, one Jack will not forget anytime soon. He pulls back to look at Daniel's face, to burn the sight in his memory along with the smell.

But that's when the clouds move outside, the moonlight sweeps the backyard, the kitchen and the hallway, and for a moment Jack feels as though he can't breathe.

Daniel's face is inches from his own, but it doesn't look like Daniel's face any more. The skin is pale and thin, the mouth slack, the eyes dark and staring off into space. In the blue light of the moon Jack is looking at a death mask, clinging to the motionless, lifeless body of his friend.

His arms feel heavy, but his fingers won't move to let go of Daniel's shoulders. His fingers are slick, and they smell of warm honey and sunlight and sand. They slip on Daniel's skin, and Daniel slips back and away.

Jack expects him to fall, hit the floor the way a dead body does, but for some unfathomable reason Daniel doesn't fall; he stands on his own in the hallway, barely a step from Jack, his arms loose at his sides.

The taste in Jack's mouth is cobwebs and milk and soft, freshly baked bread. His fingers are numb.

Slowly, he backs away from Daniel.

“I killed you,” he says, realizing.

Daniel doesn't move, doesn't say anything. His face is a mask of stillness, his eyes are still dark and vacant. He is swaying a little in place, like a man who is standing at an intersection, but has forgotten where to turn next.

“I pushed you off the balcony and you fell,” Jack tells him.

The clouds shift and darkness falls again in the hallway. The shadows swallow Daniel's naked body, leaving a motionless silhouette of grey in front of Jack.

“You died,” Jack says, very quietly. He reaches up towards Daniel's face. He is too far to touch now, he knows, but even so his fingers brush something in the dark, and it's either very cold or very hot, he can't tell, but it's painful, so he pulls his hand back on instinct, and Daniel says--

~*~

Daniel says, “Jack?”

Coffee. The moment he smells it, the reality flows back. It's very late at night, or very early in the morning, he can't tell with his internal clock all messed up. He cracks one eye open, and there is Daniel, sitting by the infirmary bed, looking down at him with a worried expression on his face. The back of Jack's wrist is still hurting from where he touched the underside of the mug of coffee that Daniel is holding.

“Hi, Jack,” Daniel says, squinting down at him from behind the glasses. He lifts the mug, takes a sip, and Jack notices that Daniel's hand is shaking, just slightly.

Jack swallows, makes an attempt at a smile. “Hey,” he says, his own colorless voice coming to him as if from very far away. “Long time no see.”

“Yeah,” Daniel smiles back, the white flicker of teeth in the low light of the infirmary. His eyes are tired behind the glasses. “Glad to have you back.”

The machine by Jack's bed isn't beeping any more. Disconnected, Jack thinks. I don't need it. I'm getting well. I'm alive. He makes a move to get up. “What...”

Daniel's hand on his chest is immediate, heavy; pressing him down, pushing him back onto the pillow. “No, Jack, don't get up.”

“Daniel...” He has to. He's alive, he needs to get vertical, if just for a moment.

“You'll just get sick all over the place,” Daniel informs him, in a soft, reasonable tone, and at the same time Jack feels the first threads of nausea tug at his throat. He lies back, swallows, pushes down the feeling.

“How long was I out?” he says, blinking a few times. His eyesight is not perfect yet, only the images close by are sharp enough.

Daniel puts the mug on the nearby table. “Two days. And that's not counting the overnight trip to the gate. You've been in pretty bad shape. Actually, we've all been in pretty bad shape. But we're better now. I'm better too, thanks to you. Now all you need is rest.”

“What about you?” Jack has the feeling that the bed next to him hasn't seen a lot of Dr. Jackson these past two days, but the chair next to his own bed probably did. He welcomes the feeling. He finds that he's missed it, a lot.

“Rest, Jack,” Daniel says. He doesn't take Jack's hand -- they're in the infirmary, it's not exactly wise -- but he sits close enough that Jack can pretend that they're touching. “I'll be here when you wake up.”


	3. Chapter 3

_I tell you and you can see,  
we're closer now than light years to go._

When he wakes up, Daniel isn't there.

The infirmary is empty. The medical equipment is silent -- black, rectangular shapes along the row of dark beds. All lights in the room are switched off. Jack sits up, pulls the sheet aside and swings his legs cautiously over the edge of the bed. He scratches his forearm -- someone has disconnected his IV drip. He slowly steps onto the cold floor.

There is a robe hanging over the back of the empty bedside chair. Jack pulls the material over his shoulders; his fingers are stiff and it's difficult to make them grasp something.

In the corridor, only the night lights are on. The recycled air is dry and smells of dust, concrete and plastic -- just the ordinary air in the Mountain. Jack walks slowly down the hall, looking around. All doors are closed. There might be people sleeping behind them, or working late. There is a security post in the next corridor, and someone is probably there, watching, as Jack slowly makes his way along the green lines to the elevator.

Nobody stops him. Two levels down, he steps out of the elevator and follows the lines round the corner, towards his office. His feet are getting cold, so he stops by the vending machine, thinks for a moment about getting a hot cup of coffee. He flexes his fingers. Nope, not a chance. Maybe later.

The door to his office is open, and beyond it there is darkness. Jack finds it comforting; he remembers the shapes of the furniture, he knows the layout of the room by heart. He steps in, moves by memory towards the chair behind the desk. In the pale light from the hallway the outlines of the room emerge, first visible only out of the corners of his eyes, and then, as his vision adjusts, he begins to see them head-on.

He sits behind his desk, takes a deep breath, then exhales slowly. The stroll from the infirmary exhausted him, he realizes. He feels sleepy again. _It's good I didn't get that coffee_ , he thinks. He leans back in the chair and closes his eyes.

The silence of the night at the Mountain pulls him straight into sleep.

~*~

Into dreaming. Where they meet in a library.

“Oh, would you stop with the library already? This wasn't how it happened!”

“Oh?” The raised eyebrows, the challenging look. Daniel's expressions are more pronounced when he's drunk, his movements more fluid. “And how would you say it happened, Jack? Please,” he waves his arm with a flourish, “ _enlighten_ me.”

The beer bottles are empty, the popcorn bag is lying crumpled on the floor by the muted TV. On the screen snowflakes drift slowly down from the night sky, and settle, glittering, on the sidewalk. Beside Jack, Daniel has shifted to a half-lying position, his legs aligned to Jack's. Their hands are still touching, Jack's fingers curled loosely around Daniel's right knee.

_On the sidewalk, Daniel is standing, thumping his boots._

“I don't remember,” Jack says. He raises the empty bottle to his eyes, looks through the glass. “It was a long time ago.”

Daniel nods thoughtfully. They fall silent. The snow drifts down and settles, glittering, on the sidewalk. Jack closes his eyes.

~*~

On the sidewalk, Daniel is standing, thumping his boots. The door to the restaurant opens, and Jack walks out.

“Is it always this cold here?” Daniel says, and starts walking. Jack follows him, zipping up his jacket.

“Only in the winter,” Jack says. “If you're lucky, that is.”

“Oh.” They round a corner. Daniel hunches his shoulders against the cutting wind. “I don't think I enjoy winter very much.”

“Sure you do.”

They get to the car, get inside. The interior is cold; Daniel busies himself with finding a position in which he won't lose too much body heat before the the heat kicks in. Jack turns the key in the ignition, puts the car in reverse and slowly backs out of the parking space. There aren't many people out in the streets at this time of night, but the visibility is shot, so they have to be careful. The snowfall had been mild the whole evening; now it's getting thicker and thicker, and the wind is picking up.

Once they're safely out, driving, Daniel turns to him. “Why?”

Jack has to rewind the last few minutes before he remembers that Daniel was asking about the winter. He glances at the other man's face. Daniel is looking at him with the sort of expression Jack has recently begun to recognize at once -- he gets to see it quite often these days. He calls it 'the blank page'. It means that whatever Daniel is asking about, he honestly wants to know. It's one of the things Daniel wants to discover again, like picture frames, commissary dinners or sunglasses.

“I'm just wondering,” Daniel says, “why I should like it when it's cold, snowing, windy, the day feels like there's no day at all, and when I come back home, I have to put up a portable heater to get through the evening alive. It doesn't feel like something I would particularly like.”

Jack looks at Daniel's face, and he doesn't see a trace of deception. Nothing that would let Jack determine if Daniel is asking the question on purpose, wanting to coax something from Jack, pull from him forcibly yet another fact he himself had forgotten.

And just how much did he forget, when he was up there, a ball of light playing with other balls of light? Jack decides to risk it.

“You like winter,” he says carefully, licking his lips, “because at my house, I have excellent central heating. First-class. Everything is warm and nice. Even the tiles in the bathroom are warm. You can set up the temperature yourself, if you want to.” He glances at Daniel again, but Daniel is looking out at the street. He is silent, and his face doesn't betray anything, so Jack decides to continue.

“You like it,” he says, “when after the shower you can stand on the warm floor. When you can dry yourself with one of my towels. And you like it, because you can take the towel with you when you go to the bedroom.”

He stops. The plunge ahead is easy, easier than he thought it would be. The beer Daniel has drunk definitely helps, and the good dinner, Daniel laughing at his lame jokes and the stupid stories Jack isn't sure himself he'd actually lived or simply made up. Daniel telling him he had a good time, and that they have to do this more often, now that he's back... Jack wonders if he'd be doing this if deep down he weren't hoping Daniel would conveniently forget everything tomorrow. He tightens his hands on the wheel.

“You like winter,” he says finally, “because you can wear that towel and nothing else when I--”

“Jack.”

He stops again. His hands are steady on the wheel. Snowflakes stick to the windshield, the wipers sweep them off.

“Just drive,” Daniel says quietly.

Jack keeps driving. Daniel is silent for a very long time. They drive out of the center, and into the suburbs; Jack's house is a couple more blocks away. Daniel doesn't comment when they don't turn towards his apartment. Maybe he knew, Jack thinks. Maybe he knew all along.

They turn right -- they're on Jack's street now, and Jack's house is there, silent and dark and waiting. They slow down, pull into the driveway, Jack turns off the engine. They sit quietly in the near darkness for a while. Daniel is looking out of the window, at the house he is seeing for the first time in over a year, and -- in a way -- for the first time ever. Jack watches him, the outline of Daniel's face black against the blue shimmer of snow. He starts wondering whether he should start the car again, offer to drive Daniel back to his apartment after all, when Daniel finally turns to him.

“I wondered,” Daniel says, and then ducks his head, smiling. “But I wasn't sure. I think...” He pauses, takes a short breath, and raises his eyes to Jack's. “I think I didn't remember.”

~*~

“You remember now?”

Daniel doesn't respond. His head is heavy on Jack's shoulder. His fingers have stopped moving over Jack's knuckles. Jack opens his eyes, blinks against the rectangle of light from the TV--

~*~

Against the rectangle of light from the corridor, and a black shape -- someone standing in the door of his office.

“Remember what?” Daniel asks, and reaches to flip on the light switch.

Jack squeezes his eyes shut against the glare of the overhead light. “Oy.”

Daniel walks over to the desk. “Headache?” he asks, unnecessarily. He stands behind the chair opposite Jack and crosses his arms. “Why did you leave the infirmary? It gave me the creeps when I came back and you weren't there.”

Daniel looks angry, but he somehow manages to sound concerned as well. Jack rubs his eyes, stretches -- he's a little stiff from sleeping in the chair; his neck hurts as if there had been a weight on his shoulder for the past few hours.

“I had to move,” he says. His feet are bare, and his toes have gotten cold. “I don't like lying in bed, doing nothing.”

“Oh.” Daniel doesn't sound entirely convinced. “So you came to do some nothing in here, and then fell asleep in the chair. How... comfortable.”

“Daniel...”

“Well, I've got good news for you, then. The doctors say you can go home now. Do some more nothing. How does that sound?”

Jack looks up. Daniel _is_ angry, for some reason. He isn't at all happy with Jack being released. Jack sits back in the chair.

“What's going on, Daniel?” he asks. And then, because something about the situation suddenly makes his stomach turn cold: “You okay?”

Daniel keeps looking at him. He smiles, a little forcibly. “I'm fine. It's not about that.”

“Then what _is_ it about?”

Daniel's smile stays, sharpens, turns into something decidedly uncomfortable. A shadow passes over his face, a barely distinguishable shimmer. Insecurity? Fear? Jack feels quite confident he can read Daniel well enough, but something is missing here, something he can't exactly put a finger on.

“I don't know,” Daniel finally admits. He tightens his arms a little more around his body. “Can I go home with you?” he asks suddenly.

Jack's eyebrows shoot up. He didn't expect that. Not so soon after the mission. Not so soon after they both nearly died. Not so soon after he had to officially come out before the rest of his team to try and save Daniel's life.

That's assuming, of course, that Daniel is asking what Jack thinks he is asking.

Jack nods, his ears sharp now to the noises outside his office. There aren't many yet. It's an early hour. He can tell, now that his internal clock is back on the right track.

“Sure,” he says, just to make sure Daniel understands. “Just let get me some shoes, will you? I'm not a big fan of strolling out barefoot.”

Daniel nods back at him, smiles another tight smile, and then turns around and walks out.

~*~

On the way home, Daniel is driving; Jack's fingers aren't useful enough just yet.

Daniel's hands are steady and sure on the wheel, his movements fluid and efficient. He navigates expertly between the slow-moving cars, swiftly crosses the lanes covered with snow and slush. He stops for the few pedestrians -- people hurrying to work, dressed in stuffed coats and collared jackets, faces hidden behind scarves, eyes under brims of hats. Over the city, the sun is rising in pink and pale violet, a thin fog over the horizon giving the world a dreamy, milky look. The truck rolls smoothly through the waking streets. The radio plays quietly, a shadow-coating of bass and guitar just outside the scope of Jack's attention.

Jack turns from the window, looks at Daniel's pale face in the morning light.

“So they let us go,” he says, not a question, just a thought that came floating into his head, out of thin air, it seems. Out of the milky twilight.

Daniel nods thoughtfully, takes a turn off the main street. “Yes, they did. And they didn't even chase us down. Which is nice of them, I suppose.”

Milky fog, milky sheets. Milk and bagels. Jack's mouth feels parched. He hasn't had anything to drink since he woke up, he realizes.

“Any idea why?” he asks, swallowing, wondering what they will get for breakfast. He doesn't remember leaving anything worth eating in his fridge. It wouldn't last that long anyway.

Daniel shrugs, slows down, stops the car at an intersection. “I don't know. Maybe we just weren't useful to them any more.”

“Useful for what?”

“For whatever they wanted with us in the first place. You did say I was doing some research in there...” He trails off. He doesn't remember, Jack realizes. That's understandable, in a way -- Jack doesn't remember much of the time they spent inside either, and Daniel was the one who got his brain fried the most, after all. And it's only Jack's luck that the things he remembers most clearly are the nausea and headache and blood on the sheets. Carter's face, looming over him, concerned. The white tiles of the bathroom.

“How come you're not sick?” he says.

Daniel glances at him, grimacing. The shadowed expression is back, the shimmer behind his eyes, and Jack realizes that the frown has barely left Daniel's face since they left the Mountain. Violet and pink glitter on the frames of his glasses.

“That's a very good question, Jack,” he says slowly. “I think... I mean, _Sam_ thinks... that what you did....” He pauses, as if uncertain if he should give a name to what happened, if he should remind Jack of the balcony, the sun and the wind. Jack schools his expression to one of careful interest, and it seems to work, because after a moment Daniel continues, “She thought that it would be a shock to my nervous system, an impulse to verify the reality again. And it seems she was right. It definitely... _shocked_ me out of there, and I sort of...” He trails off again.

“Snapped out of it?” Jack supplies.

Daniel nods, smiles a little, tight smile.“Yeah.”

“With no side effects. Just like that?”

Daniel's face scrunches up in thought, but his eyes are otherwise blank. He has nothing, Jack realizes, just as Jack himself has nothing.

Nothing but the cold feeling in his gut, that single, freezing spot deep down in his stomach.

It shouldn't have been that easy. It is _never_ that easy.

“Well, obviously, just like that,” Daniel says finally, carefully. But his frown has deepened. His moves are not so sure any more, and the car skids a little on the ice as they turn the corner. “Jack, should we head back to the base?”

“No.” Jack shakes his head. They're out of the town now, and Jack has the feeling he needs to resolve it all by himself, in the safe, familiar space of his own house. He smiles stiffly, and hopes Daniel doesn't notice. “Never mind. Let's go get something to eat.”

~*~

They stop in a mall to get groceries. Jack looks for fresh bread, but there isn't any; he grabs Melba toast and peanut butter instead, automatically going for the safest option. There aren't many people around in the store; it's too early, it seems, and what day of the week is it anyway? Soft music is coming from the speakers, low tones of some smooth jazz for the morning -- silence before the storm, before they put on something from the current top ten, before people come swarming, hurrying in and out, crowding the passageways and the parking lot, with shopping lists, clattering carts and kids trailing behind.

But that will be later. In the meantime, the clerks are still half-asleep at the checkouts. No words are exchanged. Daniel pays with his credit card and they leave.

Jack's house is still and quiet, the flat planes of the roof dark and wet above the thinning wisps of fog. Jack stands at the bottom of the stairs while Daniel gets the grocery bags from the back seat and locks the car. Daniel's boots crunch on the gravel. He walks over, stands close, breathing softly behind Jack. He doesn't say anything, doesn't prompt Jack to go in -- and for a moment they just stand there in silence, realigning themselves back to the known, to the familiar. Finally Jack shivers in the cold morning air.

“Home, sweet home,” he says cheerfully, and starts up the stairs. The cold weight in his stomach has faded, only a memory now, fainter with every step closer to the door.

Once inside, they take off their jackets and boots, and Daniel takes the groceries and starts putting together a breakfast. Jack watches him for a while from the kitchen doorway. Daniel's movements are easy and sure, automatic -- when he reaches to the cupboards, the drawers, the coffee-maker, the fridge. Years of this, Jack remembers, watching him. Days and mornings and evenings of this. Daniel doesn't need his own mug in Jack's cupboard or his own toothbrush in Jack's bathroom to feel at home in Jack's house. The weight in Jack's stomach is completely gone now. They will talk later, they will analyze later. Daniel may even wake up in the middle of the night to work on it, write down his ideas. But now it's time for thawing, for both of them, and it seems Daniel's already way ahead of Jack in the matter.

Jack leaves Daniel to his own devices and goes to take a shower.

He takes his time in the bathroom, hot water beating against his back, washing away the clean smell of the infirmary, soaking the tiredness from his muscles and bones. It feels good to stand there and watch the past few weeks float away and circle down the drain. Never again, he promises himself. Never again will he let Daniel out of his sight like that, never again will he believe what Daniel says about nice, friendly aliens. Never again.

He knows he makes that promise to himself every damn time. It doesn't make it any less important.

After the shower, he steps onto the warm floor, dries his hair and wraps himself in a towel, not bothering to shave. He'll do that later, in the evening, after he's rested enough to properly resume his life.

Daniel is sitting at the kitchen table when Jack comes out of the bathroom. Crumbs of toast mark the remains of a peanut butter sandwich, an empty cup shows that Daniel should have enough caffeine in his system to get through the rest of the day. Two more sandwiches and a cup of coffee wait for Jack on the other side of the table. Sunlight is warm on Jack's face, drapes Daniel's head in a soft, spiky halo. Jack pulls up a chair, sits across from Daniel, picks up a sandwich and takes a bite.

The taste is not what he expected at all -- sharp and strong, nauseating. Jack's stomach turns. He grimaces, manages to swallow, reaches blindly for the cup. The coffee is dark and bitter, and likewise revolting, but together the tastes blend and contradict just enough to become bearable.

“Oh fuck,” he says, and he hears Daniel's soft laughter from across the table. He puts down the cup. “What?” he asks, irritably.

Daniel just keeps laughing. He points to the sandwich. “Try some more. It becomes edible after five bites or so.”

Son of a bitch. He knew. “That wasn't funny,” Jack says, and picks up the sandwich, shoves it into his mouth. And true enough, soon the taste transforms, becomes toast and peanut butter once again, and the coffee is sweet now, way more sugar than he actually likes, but just enough to wash the initial nausea down. Daniel knew that, too.

“You could've warned me, you know.” He reaches for the second sandwich. Thankfully, no more surprises there.

Daniel waits until Jack has finished eating the sandwich. Then he leans back, lays his palms flat on the table. “I'm going to stand up now,” he says quietly. “And I'm going to walk over to you.” His voice is low, and it makes Jack look up warily. Daniel's eyes are hidden in the shadow; he has the sun behind him.

“I'm going to kneel in front of you,” Daniel says, “and help you lose that towel you're wearing. Then I'm going to blow you, and when I'm done, I'm going to take you over to the living room and fuck you on that uncomfortable couch of yours. How's that for a warning?”

Jack opens his mouth, then shuts it again. Daniel is already getting up. He comes over, just like he said, and kneels on the kitchen tiles in front of Jack. He pushes Jack's knees apart, and Jack has to turn to him, along with the chair. Daniel reaches for the towel around Jack's hips, shoves it aside, leans in and licks the inside of Jack's thigh, a long, slow sweep of tongue, licking the droplets of water Jack didn't dry off. Then he pulls back.

“Come here,” he says, and Jack pushes his hips a little bit forward, to the edge of the seat. His heart is hammering in his chest. He was half-hard when he left the shower, lost the mood somewhere along the way, between the bathroom mirror and the peanut-butter sandwich, and now Daniel brings him back to life, zero to lightspeed in less than fifteen seconds. He takes Jack into his mouth, wraps his fingers around him, tightens, strokes. His eyes are closed, and he makes a soft sound, a sweet, little moan of relish.

Jack doesn't close his eyes; he looks down at Daniel's head while Daniel sucks him, slow and hard and sweet, and then faster and lighter, guided by Jack's breathing, guided by the instinct that has propelled them forward with this for so long.

He's been starved, Jack realizes, they've both been starved for this. Reality has never been this real, has never felt this good to them, ever.

He comes curled over Daniel, shaking like an old, old man, his hand clawing into the back of Daniel's neck.

It doesn't take them long to proceed from the kitchen to the sunlit space of Jack's living room. Daniel's clothes are rough against Jack's back, the zipper bites Jack's skin until Daniel shoves his own pants past his knees and then kicks them off. The bottle of oil makes a soft click when it's opened, the couch creaks when Daniel puts his full weight on the cushions. Jack waits, lets his limbs be arranged for a best fit, welcomes the weight of Daniel's body across his back, welcomes the strong, wet kiss to his nape. His bones feel like melted bolts of iron, his aching joints buffered in warmth, his body leaden, all heated blood and heavy muscles. The gravity is pulling him face-down into the couch, and Daniel's body is pushing him down even further. Daniel's hand slides over his hip, to his thigh, between his legs, pushing them apart, opening him.

Daniel makes a strained sound when he enters -- he always does, can't seem to keep it down, a short, sharp whoosh of breath between Jack's shoulder blades. It sounds like Daniel is breathing for the first time since they started, like he's just remembered he needs air to go on.

Jack angles himself for the entry, against the arm of the couch, against the pain when Daniel slides a little back out. He pushes back in soon, though, so Jack reaches to grab his hip, pull him close and hold him there for a minute. Daniel stills, small shivers running through his body, the vibration of muscles translating into Jack's spine.

“Jack?” he whispers after a moment, a soft exhalation in Jack's ear. Breathless. “You okay?”

Not ready to answer just yet, Jack strokes Daniel's flank, the jut of the hipbone, the curve of the buttock. They went at it too fast; they often do, when the hunger in Daniel is a little too much for Jack to face head-on. Jack digs his fingers into the warm flesh, squeezes, strokes, then lets go.

“I'm okay,” he says, bracing himself back against the arm of the couch. The pain has subsided, it's almost gone now, so he can let Daniel drive. “I'm good to go.”

He closes his eyes, and holds on, and Daniel takes over.

~*~

“Do you think we could stop, just for a minute?”

“Stop what?”

“Everything.”

Daniel's head is heavy on his shoulder. The TV is switched off -- Jack must have found the remote at some point, shut down the static -- and the room is dark around them. Outside, the city is never really dark, though, so Jack can see the contours of the coffee table, the chair, the fireplace. Daniel's sock-clad feet tangled with his own. His hand curled over Daniel's kneecap.

He realizes he is thirsty. So much for drinking beer and eating salted popcorn instead of a dinner. He swallows. That damn piece of corn is still wedged between his teeth.

“And how exactly do you stop everything, Daniel?” he asks, just to keep up the conversation. He can't imagine what would happen if they stopped talking. They would probably sleep, his mind tells him, but where would they wake up? The world seems to spin for a moment as Jack takes that in, and then Daniel stirs against his shoulder and raises his head.

“I don't know,” Daniel says. His eyes are huge and pale in the close-up. “But I used to think... when you die, I suppose.”

~*~

He wakes up in his own bedroom, in his own bed, under the sheets he hasn't used in a long while. The angle of light on the ceiling tells him it's afternoon, the color tells him it's almost sunset. In the middle of winter, they are one and the same.

He is alone. He wasn't alone when he went to bed, he remembers that clearly. Daniel was with him, they went to bed together, but Daniel had had a cup of coffee; he wouldn't fall asleep for a very long time. He brought the towel back from the kitchen, cleaned them both up, told Jack to sleep; he would be here when Jack woke up.

“Daniel?”

Jack's voice echoes in the empty hallway. The door to the bedroom is open. Jack listens. There is no sound in the house except for his own breathing, the distant murmur of the fridge, the wind in the trees outside, in the backyard.

He said he would _be here_.

There's no need to be paranoid, Jack thinks as he gets up, slides out of bed. There's no need to panic. Daniel is probably asleep, or wearing headphones, or reading, for chrissakes.

The kitchen is empty, and so is the bathroom. In the living room Daniel's laptop sits on the coffee table, the screensaver swirling tails of blue and silver light. The couch is empty. Jack steps down the stairs, turns to the hallway.

And everything stops.

Daniel is there, curled up on the floor under the coat-rack. He is breathing -- short, shallow, desperate gulps for air -- but other than that he doesn't make a sound. Minute tremors wrack his body every now and then. His cell phone lies open a few inches away from his curled fingers.

Jack stands in the hallway, frozen in place. Part of his brain marvels at this -- he doesn't stop like that, not now, not ever -- but some other part of his brain, the one that has kept getting the signals from his gut, and managed to suppress them right up until now, that part of his brain supplies him with an image, round and nice and perfectly rendered, and completely detached in an odd sort of way.

The image is of Daniel, sitting naked on a windowsill, in a room with high ceiling and floating white curtains. He is holding a book. His mouth is moving, but there are no sounds coming out, and when he turns his head to look at Jack, his eyes are empty, shining; his eyes are full of light.


	4. Chapter 4

_I have got to leave to find my way._

“This is going to get ugly, sir.”

Yeah, Jack thinks, like it hasn't already. He doesn't say it out loud, though. The young doctor doesn't look like he's much into sarcasm. He is standing beside Jack, shaking a little from nerves or tiredness, Jack can't tell. The doctor is looking down at Daniel's motionless body on the infirmary bed with a mournful expression. It makes Jack wonder what 'ugly' actually means to this man.

They managed to stabilize Daniel for the night, or at least that's what they said. Placed him in isolation, pumped him full of drugs, attached an array of wires and tubes -- that's how it looks from Jack's point of view. There is an oxygen mask over Daniel's face -- they said he might have trouble breathing on his own. A patchwork of small bruises has already begun to show on his face and hands -- the capillaries bursting, small patches of internal bleeding. He looks like a car crash victim on the morning after.

To Jack, he looks like someone who will slip away in the night, without opening his eyes, without saying a word.

To Jack, the situation is already way past 'ugly'.

“Keep me informed,” he tells the tired doctor, who nods without looking at Jack. As Jack leaves, the doctor sits in the observation room chair to keep his night watch over Daniel.

In the hallway, Jack blindly rounds the corner and bumps into Carter. She smiles at him stiffly.

It's three in the morning, Jack realizes. Carter should be asleep. She should be away from here. She can't watch this. Not again.

“Sir.”

He walks past her, consciously ignoring any attempt at conversation. “He's fine, Carter,” he throws over his shoulder. “Get some rest. The briefing is at 0800.”

“Briefing, sir?”

She sounds genuinely surprised. Jack pauses, turns around. He's mildly irritated that she doesn't get it, but he doesn't let it show. “We're going back there,” he says, calmly. “We can't let Daniel die like this. Not now. Not after...” He trails off, but she's already smiling. Her face lights up when she does, and that's when Jack gets it.

She's been waiting for this, all night. That's why she's here, in her BDUs, pacing just outside the infirmary. Prepared. Waiting for _him_ to make the decision. Surprised that he thinks there should be a briefing, that they won't just pack up and go.

He relaxes, allows himself to smile, just a little. They might just as well skip the briefing; both Carter and Teal'c already know as much as they need to know. And Jack has a feeling that Hammond won't mind, not under the circumstances.

“0800, Carter,” he tells her. “The gate room. Prepped and ready. Now go get some sleep, that's an order.”

“Yes, sir.”

~*~

Daniel is snoring softly, his head heavy in the crook of Jack's shoulder and neck. His fingers stopped moving some time ago, and his hand slipped from Jack's knuckles to the carpet. Jack lifts his own hand and places it over Daniel's, rubs the warm skin. Daniel murmurs something, and his fingers move slightly. Auto-pilot, Jack thinks. An automatic reaction to touch, to movement. He leans back, lets Daniel's head follow, then holds him up by the shoulders.

“Hey,” he says, tugging Daniel up. “C'mon up. On the couch. Here we go.”

Daniel comes up, his head swaying, and blindly follows Jack's tugging. He lets himself be manhandled onto the seat, then lies with his face in his hands, curling on the soft cushions. He's not snoring any more, but he's not awake, either.

Jack sits by him on the couch. He strokes Daniel's hair, the back of his neck. He could fall asleep right here, like this, leaning into the curve of Daniel's body. Wrapped in Daniel's warmth, he could sleep until morning. Or maybe Daniel would wake up, at some point in the night, tell Jack to fuck off and find his own bed, push him off the couch too small for them both, so that Jack would end up on the floor -- and all that without even being consciously awake. Jack thinks that would be good, too. He could live with that.

His head is swimming, the vertigo of tiredness and the late night. He closes his eyes for a moment -- just for a moment, to rest.

~*~

He wakes up crying. The VIP bedroom is dark, and his face is wet. His eyes are hurting.

Over the bathroom sink, he puts his head under the stream of cold water and holds it there until his vision clears. He won't be able to take much today, he realizes. The medics cleared him for duty, and Hammond didn't override his decision to go back to the planet, but in the long run, that doesn't count -- it might as well be his own mind that betrays him today. Jack stares at his reflection, long and hard. The water is dripping down his face, and there are dark underlines of worry and tiredness under his eyes. It doesn't look good, even for him.

Hesitantly, he reaches for the razor, and starts shaving.

When he gets to the gate room, clean, dressed and armed to his teeth, Teal'c is already standing at the foot of the ramp, looking as if he's been standing there for all eternity, waiting for Jack to show up. Carter joins them a moment later, adjusting the straps on her backpack. Up at the consoles Harriman starts dialing. The control room is empty -- the general isn't in today. Urgent family business or something of the sort; Jack doesn't remember.

The gate spins, the chevrons light up, one by one. Jack checks the state of his armor by touch, automatic movements of long practice, and at the same time he checks the state of his team.

Beside him, Carter is standing rigid and ready. She is swaying slightly on her feet. She tries not to show it, but Jack can see it clearly, from the corner of his eye, and then head-on, when he turns to her, and looks at her, _really_ looks at her. Behind her, Teal'c meets his eye with a calm, solemn expression. The disapproval in his look is clear, though, and suddenly Jack feels as if the earth has been swept from under his feet.

They're not equipped for this mission, he realizes with morbid clarity. And then, _what the hell am I doing?_ This is _insane_. Even if we manage to contact someone back there, even if they don't simply ignore us, what good will we be able to do anyway? We need a better idea, and Carter hasn't slept the whole night, we don't even know where to look and what to look for, and _why the hell am I going away, while I should be here when Daniel wakes up, I should be here, I can't leave him alone..._

He opens his mouth to call the whole thing off, but then the last chevron lights up, and in that brief moment of silence before the storm, Jack's heart skips a beat and the cold weight in his stomach pulls him down to the ground.

“Seventh chevron... won't lock,” Walter says, but Jack knows it even before he hears the voice.

There is no way out of this, he realizes, and the thought is slow, dripping; the thought is chilling him to the bone.

_They're not getting out the easy way this time._

His body is already ahead of his brain, the animal instinct suppressing everything else. He feels his eyes sting, and the cold weight in his stomach turns to heat, turns to rage, blinding him momentarily, shutting out all the sounds. In the muted world, he turns away from Carter and Teal'c, and he walks out of the gate room. Behind him he feels the angry wave of air, Carter shouting at Harriman to _run the damn diagnostic right now!_ , but he knows it's no use.

There is no way out of this.

Daniel is not waking up.

And there is not a damn thing they can do about it, plan or no plan, sleep or no sleep.

 _Hammer it home, willya?_ he thinks as he walks into the locker room. To his right, an airman closes his locker and hurries out, quietly closing the door. Jack is left alone. He strips off his gear and sits on the bench to take off his boots.

He is untying the second bootlace when the image hits him.

Daniel leaning over him in the bed, his smile gentle, his eyes flickering with inner light. “I am made of light,” he says, smiling slowly. “Why would I read what I already know?”

Jack kicks off his boots and runs barefoot to the infirmary.

~*~

Of all the things he could never do, 'releasing his burden', as Daniel eloquently put it, has always been number one on Jack's list.

The thing is, Jack never actually believed in the 'releasing' part. He felt that the burden was just something you had to carry, whether you liked it or not. It's was a part of you, and you couldn't give it up, or you'd become something else, something other than yourself. What worth was ascension anyway, if you had to give up the one thing which defined you, the very darkest piece of your soul?

But now he finds himself suspending disbelief, this one time, when he sits by Daniel's bed and whispers into Daniel's ear. He needs to believe that 'releasing the burden' makes sense, this one time. This is how Daniel did it in the past, this is what made him cheat death, escape the inevitable, and then come back, in all the innocence and wonder of the born anew.

This is what made him turn to Jack, one cold December evening, in the passenger seat of Jack's car, and say that he wasn't sure, that he didn't remember. But the faith in his eyes was there, the life in his eyes was there -- and it would be there again, if only Jack can persuade him now, if only Jack can make _himself_ believe.

 _I wouldn't have done this without you_ , Daniel said, back during the nightmare Jack wishes he didn't remember.

 _I am made of light_ , Daniel said, in a dream Jack wishes he could remember more clearly.

He sits by Daniel's bed until he loses track of time. Daniel breathes slowly, quietly, and Jack doesn't know whether Daniel is breathing on his own or the machinery is breathing for him. Doesn't matter now. Jack's voice is hoarse from whispering. The doctors around Daniel's bed come and go, but Jack doesn't pay attention. Carter sits beside him for a while, says something about chevrons and gates and diagnostics, but Jack can't hear her. Teal'c sits beside him for the rest of the night. They don't talk. Daniel is sleeping.

At dawn, Jack jerks awake with a start. There is movement around him, people hurrying in and out. Something is beeping fast, someone is shouting. Jack is shoved out of the way. He stands under the far wall, watching the commotion, uncomprehending, until a sense of déja vu settles over him, along with a perfect calm.

Now or never, he thinks. Daniel. Now or never.

~*~

Some undefined time later, he is still standing there, waiting. His arm hurts. He turns his head.

It's Carter, holding him by the shoulder. Holding him up, or leaning against him, Jack isn't sure. Her eyes are closed, but it doesn't look like she's waiting any more.

Jack doesn't remember if it's her who takes him home, after. He doesn't remember who is driving. Somebody is saying something, about being left alone. A door slams, then another. Dawn comes. The bed beckons. Jack lets himself fall.

~*~

The couch in the living room is empty. The popcorn bag crunches under Jack's foot. The beer bottle rolls and clinks against the leg of the coffee table.

Jack stands in the darkness, looking down at the cushions of the couch. Are there still indentations Daniel's body left, or is it just imagination showing Jack pictures that were never real? His gum itches from the piece of popcorn that's still there, still making him crazy. He bites down, makes the last effort to push the damn thing from between his teeth.

To his surprise, the piece finally slips out. Jack spits it onto his palm, takes a closer look. It's been bothering him all evening, he should at least know what it was.

It turns out to be a small sheet of paper, folded twice... no, four times. Jack frowns. He thought it was a piece of popcorn, but this is too big, and it's dry, it shouldn't be dry...

He unfolds the paper. There is a string of letters on it, a single line of flourish handwriting.

Daniel's handwriting.

~*~

His death is a quiet affair.

“So,” he tells Daniel. “That's how it goes then?”

Daniel doesn't respond, of course. Daniel is dead.

Jack nods to himself, and the barrel of his gun moves with him. Cool touch against his temple. Clean, metallic smell. Sense memory of steel. Memory of touch. Memory of how he'd been sitting in the same position, so many years ago, when he came so close to pulling the trigger.

His hand is steady, it stopped trembling after he closed the doors and bolted them shut.

It had started when he'd woken up from the dream of Daniel's absence in the living room that had never been there.

 _How to pass the message on with no medium_ skitters through his head. Jack doesn't recognize the thought, but he recognizes the truth in it, as if the thought were his own.

In the sunlit apartment that was never there, Daniel stood on the balcony, felt the breeze on his face. His body had the sense memory of being so close to falling.

But his body had never known the actual shock of hitting the pavement.

In the living room that was never there, Jack looked at the crumpled piece of paper, turned it so he could see the letters in the faint blue light from the window.

The message was short and simple, and it turned a light in Jack's head, a blinding flash that almost hurt his eyes from the inside.

_“There is only one way out.”_

“Yeah,” Jack says quietly, to himself, to Daniel, to the world in general. “That's how it goes.”

The air is perfectly quiet when he pulls the trigger.


	5. Chapter 5

_All of this is coming your way._

The sheet is a fog, is milk, is a veil on his face. His lips are dry, chapped, and his mouth tastes of old cobwebs and dust. He is warm, wrapped in soft fabric, a cool draft sweeping his bare toes. He is wrapped in a sheet, he realizes.

He is dead, a body wrapped in a shroud; a dead man witnessing his own funeral. He can't breathe.

 _Let me go_ , he thinks. _I can't take this any more. Just let me go._

A weight settles next to him, a warmth of another human body draws near. Not dead, then, he corrects himself. Sleeping. Waking up. He breathes in, slowly, cautiously. The soft, wet material moves against his lips.

“Shh,” someone says from miles above him -- inches from his ear. The touch of the sheet is cool in his face, the fabric sliding off and away. “I'm here. You can wake up now.”

Jack opens his eyes.

He is lying in bed, in the middle of a large, bright, empty room. To his side there is an open window, long, white curtains billowing in the wind. It is midday -- the sun casts a glowing rectangle of light onto the floor. There are other windows in the room, each of them hidden behind the vertical stripes of blinds.

Daniel is lying beside him, his body aligned to Jack's, his hand stroking Jack's naked shoulder, a slow, lazy caress. His fingers are running along the curve of Jack's biceps, down over his forearm to his wrist, lightly grazing his hip. On the upstroke Daniel slides his fingertips through the thin layer of sweat in the crook of Jack's elbow, rubs the moisture into Jack's skin.

Jack swallows. The touch of Daniel's fingers is sweet, but the gentleness of it is unnerving. He forces himself to lie still, breathe deep in the stifling air. He doesn't turn his head to look at Daniel.

“Where are we?” he asks, as soon as he is able to find his voice.

Daniel smiles; Jack can see the change of expression from the corner of his eye.

“Sanctuary,” Daniel tells him. He keeps stroking Jack's arm. The touch tickles, but Jack doesn't move. Now is not the time, he thinks. Not yet. Not until I know for sure.

He tries to relax into Daniel's touch. “I reiterate,” he says carefully. “Where are we?”

Daniel seems to ponder this for a moment. His hand strokes down, up, slowly. “Where we meet,” he says after a while. “Our thoughts. Expectations. This is our common ground.”

Jack nods. Fair enough. “I've been here before,” he observes.

“Yes,” Daniel agrees, with no hesitation. “During the shifting.”

“Which is?”

“The moment between going in and coming back out. And outside of it... you are here.” Daniel strokes his wrist, the inside of his palm, the curve of his thumb. “This is our hiding place, Jack.” His hand moves to rest on Jack's hip, fingertips grazing the skin just shy of Jack's pubic hair. “I made it, just for us, deep inside their reality. A place where they would never find us.” The hand moves between Jack's legs, curls around Jack's soft flesh, pulls gently. “We are safe here, you and me. You can relax now. You can rest. I'll be here. I'll be with you.”

And Jack can't help but laugh then, a dry, empty laughter, hurting his throat, splitting his parched lip. Daniel's hand is still moving between his legs, insistent and heavy, but Jack's body doesn't react -- Jack is too tired, too wrung-out by the constant switching, the constant aligning to the new realities, each of them more real than the next.

He lies still for a moment longer, waiting until Daniel's stroking has grown more focused, until his attention has shifted from talking to Jack to just touching -- and then he rears up, dislodging Daniel's hand, and twists his body to the side, landing on top of Daniel, crushing him to the mattress.

Daniel lets out a breath, a soundless rush of air out of his lungs. He tries to struggle, but Jack holds him down, pinning his wrists above his head. Years of long practice, Jack thinks with satisfaction. No one can take this away from me, not even here.

“Who the hell are you?” he says, staring hard at Daniel -- who is so obviously _not_ Daniel. Not _his_ Daniel, anyway. “What have you done to him?”

He expects a wide-eyed surprise. He expects contradiction. He doesn't get it.

The man doesn't respond. He is not struggling any more -- he is looking up at Jack with complete and utter calm. His face is Daniel's face, and his eyes are pale blue, just like Daniel's, but the person behind them is someone else, someone alien.

Someone watching Jack, assessing him even now.

“Who are you?” Jack repeats quietly. He crushes the wrists he's holding above the man's head, twists the tendons in his tight grip. “I won't ask again.”

The man smiles at this -- a scary, humorless smile -- so Jack doesn't hesitate long; he drives his knee straight into the man's exposed groin. The blue eyes crease with pain, and for a moment the expression is so much like the real Daniel that Jack feels his heart twist to a small, tight knot in his chest. But is this real pain, or just a simulation -- Jack can't really tell. The man is still silent, though, so Jack pulls back a little, changes his grip on the captured wrists, takes a swing with his free arm and drives his fist into the side of the man's jaw.

The sound of knuckles meeting bone is intensely rewarding -- and the resulting feeling is like floodgates opening suddenly somewhere deep in Jack's gut. He hits again, and again. The man's head jerks against the mattress.

“What else have you stolen from him?” Jack asks, still hitting, not really expecting an answer. It feels good to release his anger. It feels good to have someone to release it on. “This memory? This bed?” There is blood on the man's face, on the sheet. “This place? This _idea_?” Jack flexes his wrist. His knuckles are starting to hurt.

“He managed to trick you, didn't he?” he says, holding the man's head still for another blow. “Went way above your heads to get to me, to get me out, and now you want to use this against me. _Sanctuary_.” He spits the word, then hits the man again. “Like hell it is. Where's the cell you've been keeping us in? Where's the rest of my team, god damn it!”

He stops hitting. He is breathing hard, leaning heavily on the motionless body beneath him. The man doesn't make any attempt to fight back. Tiredly, Jack lets go of his hands and slides off the bed. Once on the floor, he pulls himself up, and walks over to the open window on shaking legs. He leans against the windowsill and raises his head to look out at the city.

Which is not there.

He should have known, he thinks, and maybe he knew, but simply didn't acknowledge the thought. It was obvious from the start, wasn't it?

There is nothing beyond the window but the bright, sharp light, drilling into his tired eyes. Jack squeezes them shut and slides to the floor, with his back to the windowsill, leaning against the wall, straightening his legs.

The room is silent. Jack's heartbeat is an uneven thrum in his ears. His breath is a clockwork, sharp and ragged. He counts to ten, to twenty, to fifty. Seconds tick away with each number. The silence stretches. Jack's heartbeat slows down and his breathing evens out. He sighs deeply, then begins to count to a hundred.

“There is no cell,” says a clear voice above him. “There is just a middle station between here and there.”

Jack stops counting, but the time doesn't stop. The voice is still Daniel's voice, and Jack feels a rush of impotent anger rising from the bottom of his stomach. He doesn't open his eyes.

“Where is _there_?” he asks quietly -- he is too tired to be misunderstood now, he is too tired to solve any more puzzles today. All he wants is to see Daniel, the _real_ Daniel, to see the rest of his team. All he wants is to go home, and for all of this to be over. He can still feel the blood, sticky and slick on his hands.

“A spaceship,” the voice answers, to Jack's mild surprise. “A research station, if you will.”

The words echo in Jack's mind. “A research station,” he repeats numbly. His head is getting heavy. He lets it fall towards his chest. “And what is the...” He fishes for the right word, but his mind feels like a sieve, the language slipping through it and sliding away.

“The subject of our research?” the voice supplies helpfully.

Jack nods. His head droops even lower.

Something touches the underside of his chin. Something cold, something wet. Something not entirely pleasant. He lifts his head, forces himself to open his eyes.

“Isn't that something you already know?” the creature in front of him asks.

Jack blinks. The cool touch slides over his cheek, leaving a wet trail behind. Leaving a trail of cold, making a shiver run down his spine, and his hair stand on end.

The pale eyes in a blue, round face regard him with curiosity and calm. Fluid glistens on the translucent skin.

_“I am made of light,” Daniel said, smiling slowly. “Why would I read what I already know?”_

“Ascension,” Jack says, transfixed. “That's what you're after.” And then his mind kicks back into gear, and his memories resurface, one by one, and he takes a mental step back, beside and out of himself. He feels an empty laughter bubbling, deep in his chest.

“You poor, stupid bastards,” he chokes. “You'll never get this out of him. Never. You don't know Daniel. You stupid, mean little bastards...”

The pale eyes blink down at him, the mouth curves in a smile, not entirely unlike Daniel's. The creature doesn't say anything, though, and Jack's mind is still working, still switching gears, still putting together the small bits and pieces rattling around in his memory.

The afternoon light, pleasant and warm on his face. The sounds of the church bells during the day, and the jazz concerts at night.

Daniel, naked, kneeling on the floor between Jack's legs.

Daniel, bleeding and bruised, kneeling among the shards of a broken mirror.

Jack smiles. He fought so hard, tried so much, even though it seemed pointless at the time. Even though he got nothing, not even a flicker of recognition, not even a glimpse of a conscious decision. But it was there all the time, just beneath the surface, Daniel connecting the dots when no one was looking. Jack raises his eyes.

“You tried to make him into somebody else,” he says. “You tried to make him forget who he was, so he would give you all that stuff on a platter.” He grimaces into the calm, perfect face, into the hollow, empty look. “Well, ain't life tough.”

But the creature doesn't answer. It merely tilts its head to the side, the expression on its face otherwise unchanged. Behind it, the room blurs and shifts -- the bed, the sunlight, the blinds disappear, melting into a soft, glowing blue. Jack begins to feel cold -- he can't find his arms or legs any more. He realizes he has to keep talking. The words will warm him up, they will keep him alive; the truth can be his anchor; and wherever it leads him, it can't be worse than this.

“He found a way out,” he says, careful not to reveal too much. “He told us how to help him escape, and we did. But you put him back here somehow, you put all of us back. You made us a nice little home, with nice little domestic... stuff. You made us feel.... safe.”

His eyelids are getting heavy, and the shifting unreality of the room is making his head swim. But his mind is still working, still in the overdrive of the sudden _knowing_. Where is it coming from? Does he even know the source? _Daniel_ , he thinks. _Are you still here, buddy? Is it you or am I making this up?_

But they are listening, he realizes. They are quiet, but they're listening.

Maybe this was all a test, and the real challenge is the one round the corner?

Jack closes his eyes, breathes in. The air is suffocating and wet. There are shadows under his eyelids, motionless, waiting.

“You tried,” he says, “to make us believe... to make _him_ believe... he was dying.” His voice is barely a murmur; he's not sure they can even understand him. But he has to keep talking; the reassurance of his own voice, the confidence in his ability to think clearly -- these are the things that will keep him afloat.

“You expected him to find the easy way out. To _show_ you how to ascend, so you could take his brain apart to see how he tried to do it. You naïve little bastards.” He laughs, then coughs briefly. There is something in his throat, he realizes; something thin and soft, something slithering down his throat, itching, tickling. He can't get it out. He must keep talking.

“You see,” he says, forcing himself to swallow, “Daniel's got a knack for escaping. He's got a knack for questioning stuff. You just can't shut it down, no matter how hard you try. No matter how long you pick his brain, he's gonna turn back around and ask you about it to your face. He's just reckless like that. Stupid.” He smiles to himself. Easy to get distracted, easy to think about who Daniel is. Easy to remember the good things, the bad things, the most annoying things. He grimaces. “Whatever. There is nothing you can do to us now. We'll just turn back around and escape the next time, every time. It's just what we do.”

There is silence, and the shadows under his eyelids don't move. Jack leans his head back, finds sticky softness instead of the hard wall. He is exhausted, his breath shallow, his head heavy and aching. “You poor, stupid bastards,” he repeats tiredly. “Get the fuck away from me. Just leave me alone...”

“I'm afraid it is not that easy, Jack O'Neill,” the voice says, and it is not Daniel's voice any more. It also isn't gentle any more either -- it's cold, and it's echoing, as if they were in a large, empty room. “There is something we can still do. Something very simple. Something we can do now, after we've learned so much about you.”

The touch, when it comes again, is a warm trickle of blood against the side of Jack's face. Something sharp pinches his temple, and Jack opens his mouth in a silent scream -- it feels like something is drilling a hole in his bone from the inside. Something is making its way in or out of his brain, but it hurts too much to tell the direction. He tries to raise his hand to claw it out, but he can't move. He can't feel his hands, he can't feel his body any more.

He manages to wheeze in a breath. “Is this the point--” he pants through clenched teeth, through the red haze of pain. “Is this the point when you say 'give us what we want or we kill you'?” He doesn't feel his face any more, only the pulsing pain in his temple, the roaring of the blood in his ears. Spots of light are bursting under his eyelids. He grimaces, trying to smile. “Because that would be just... cheesy.”

The creature doesn't say anything. Apparently it doesn't appreciate Jack's humor. Never mind, Jack thinks. Not the first one, and certainly not the last. And this will all be over in a minute, anyway.

And it is. The pain in Jack's skull gets to the point of his tolerance, and then slowly creeps a notch up. It doesn't stop there.

 _Well, that ain't new_ skitters through Jack's head just before he passes out.

~*~

The silence is blissful, but definitely too short. He might have been gone for hours, days, weeks, but it feels like barely a second, a moment's respite from the pain and the vertigo of the shifting worlds.

He comes to in a horizontal position, on a flat, hard surface. His can feel his whole body itching and tingling, as if there were small electric shocks discharging across his skin.

But the key word, his brain supplies quickly, is _feel_ : he can _feel_ his body again. It's heavy and tired and aching all over, but he can feel it, all the way from his scalp to the tips of his toes.

And he can hear. Sounds -- scratching, rustling.

A shaky intake of breath--

“Jack?”

He opens his eyes.

The ceiling floats above him for a moment, then sharply comes into focus. It doesn't fall, though, and the floor doesn't roll from under Jack or slip away. Jack reckons that's good, as far as ceilings and floors are concerned, but still he carefully spreads his arms and holds on in case the room changes its mind.

The metal under his fingers is cool to the touch. The tingling in his fingers fades away gradually, and so does the itching in the rest of his body. It leaves behind a deep, echoing ache, but it's nothing Jack isn't used to handling.

Slowly, he raises his head and looks around.

Daniel is sitting a few feet away. He is in his desert cammo, but his feet are bare and his weapons are missing. His glasses are gone, too, and there's a few days' worth of thick, red stubble on his jaw.

Behind him, outside a narrow, triangle-shaped window, hyperspace swirls with tails of blue, silver and white.

“Hi, Jack,” Daniel says, meeting Jack's eyes with a small, crooked smile on his face. His arms are crossed on his chest in that protective self-hug Jack remembers from the days way back before Daniel ever heard of ascension. “Nice of you to drop by.”

~*~

They sit opposite each other for a very long time. Daniel doesn't say anything else. He looks at Jack, looks away again, glances out of the window. Blue and silver lights reflect in his eyes.

Jack has pulled himself up to a sitting position, leaned back against the wall. He doesn't trust himself to speak yet. The ache in his body is disappearing and coming back in turns, making him clench his fists and close his eyes until he can breathe normally again. He can't identify the source of the pain; it feels like it's been there all the time.

The cell is small, looks more like a broom closet than a real cell. A broom closet with a very nice view. So they are on a spaceship, after all. The creature, whatever it was, didn't lie this time. Research station. Fake realities. Dreams inside dreams.

Jack swallows, licks his lips; wonders briefly when was the last time he had anything to drink.

“How do I know--,” he begins, watching Daniel's head snap up and turn to him. Daniel's eyes are wide, his whole body on alert. Jack pauses.

 _How long has he been here?_ he thinks. _This place is too small. He must be going insane._

But then he corrects himself. It doesn't mean anything. Daniel's body language, Daniel's looks -- they don't mean anything.

He clears his throat. “How do I know if it's really you?”

For a long time, Daniel doesn't answer. He just looks at Jack, fingers clenching and releasing the folds of his field jacket. The expression on his face is blank, uncomprehending.

At last he gives a small, nervous laugh, hugs himself more tightly. “How do _I_ know if it's really _you_ ,” he says, echoing Jack word for word.

Jack grimaces. Fool me once, he thinks. His brain is already throwing up barriers -- he is steeling himself for the disappointment again. Steeling himself for the pain. He tilts his head.

“That's the lamest comeback I've ever heard from you, Daniel,” he says. “You can do way better than that.”

Daniel doesn't react for a moment -- it's as if Jack's words reached him from a distance, with the unavoidable delay of a long-range transmission. But then his expression changes, grows undeniably sad, and Daniel smiles quickly, a sharp, ragged smile. He swallows visibly, and says, in a broken voice Jack can barely hear:

“Actually, Jack... I don't think I can.”

It hits Jack hard, the utter despair in that voice. It hits Jack harder than anything anyone could ever physically do to his body.

“ _Jesus Christ_ , Daniel...” he hears himself say, against his own better judgement.

He is shaking when he pushes himself from the wall. He is shaking when he scoots across the floor towards Daniel. His body protests, his bones and muscles whining, the deep ache growing back into pain in his tortured joints. Jack ignores it. He gets to Daniel at last, grabs his shoulders and pulls him in close, crushes him to his chest.

“Jesus Christ,” he repeats, holding Daniel tight, squeezing the life out of him without gentleness or care. “Jesus _Christ_ , Daniel.” He is shaking with the overwhelming rush of relief, and in his arms, Daniel is shaking, too.

~*~

“If they want the stuff you have in your head,” he asks a long time later, “why not just take it?”

They are sitting together by the wall, watching hyperspace swirling outside. Jack has already checked every square inch of their little cell, and found nothing except the air vent -- not much of a discovery, and not very useful, either, since it's about ten inches in diameter, and completely dark inside. No hidden panels in the walls, no controls, and no doors.

They've been beamed in, Daniel told him. Didn't look like the Asgard technology, but apparently worked just like it. Daniel had been waiting here for a few hours before Jack arrived. No, he doesn't know how much; lost track of time watching the space, maybe slept a little, too. No, he doesn't know where Carter or Teal'c are, he hasn't seen them since... well, he doesn't remember that, either, and the infirmary at the fake SGC doesn't count, does it?

No, the infirmary definitely doesn't count. Jack was more than glad to agree with Daniel on this one.

They've been over the last few days -- weeks? -- in a general, summarizing way. Pointed out the main events -- Daniel's apartment (Jack forced himself to be calm), the waiting room (Daniel had only seen it once, when they made their 'escape'), the fake SGC. Jack didn't ask how Daniel knew. He didn't mention the dreams. He decided it was something they should keep secret for now, and apparently Daniel did, too, because he didn't press the issue. There would be time for details later, Jack told him, once they'd found Carter and Teal'c. Once they got home in one piece.

“If you've got all this in your brain, why didn't the probe pick it up? If they can meddle with our heads all they want, why couldn't they just dig deep enough?”

Jack is thinking aloud, so it doesn't bother him that much that Daniel doesn't say anything. There are still pieces of caked blood in Daniel's hair. The wound in his temple is sealed, just like Jack's, but the skin must be itching just the same; Daniel tries to scratch it every once in a while, and each time Jack catches his wrist, pulls it back down, and Daniel scowls.

“This whole... experiment, with the fake realities,” Jack says. “It feels a bit... overdone, don't you think?”

Daniel doesn't think anything, apparently, or has nothing to say. Jack rubs Daniel's back in a slow, up and down motion of his hand.

“The way I see it,” he tells Daniel, “good old Oma must have built in some safety switch. So nobody could take stuff from you if you didn't want them to. This way they can only... coax you into giving it. Maybe you could let them take it, if you believed it was for the right cause.”

Jack nods to himself. It is as good explanation as any. Combined with the 'research' he knows the aliens were doing, it might even be true. He rubs Daniel's back some more, then gives him a gentle slap between the shoulder blades.

“Anyway, I'm glad you didn't tell them,” he says. “Otherwise we'd be out of the airlock in no time.”

Daniel shudders at that. Jack pulls him closer, squeezes his arm. Daniel has been jumpy for a while now. Skittish. Jack tells him so, and Daniel just grimaces, pulls his knees up to his chest. Jack doesn't try to make him relax. He squeezes Daniel's arm again, strokes slowly. There is nothing sexual about it, nothing but simple reassurance. Daniel is leaning into Jack's body heat, and Jack is leaning into Daniel's. They could stay like that for a very long time, Jack thinks. It's just another chunk of reality. The swirls of hyperspace outside are lulling him into sleep.

“They were torturing you.”

Jack opens his eyes. He zoned out, he realizes. His hand has slipped from Daniel's arm to the floor, and Daniel is motionless beside him, his knees still drawn up to his chest. He is staring off into space, and the space still shimmers in silver and blue.

Jack doesn't have his watch, but it feels like at least an hour has passed since he first woke up in the cell. His joints are stiff. He stretches, cranes his neck, and focuses back on Daniel.

“What?” he asks.

Daniel doesn't respond. He keeps staring straight ahead, and Jack belatedly realizes Daniel may be somewhere else altogether. PTSD? Too soon. But then again -- maybe too late. Another lie? Possibly. Anything is possible now.

A shiver runs through him. Their cell has gotten colder, his body reports. He wraps his arm around Daniel again, pulls Daniel's head closer, to rest on his shoulder. Daniel follows obediently. Jack strokes his back, his arms, slips his hand to Daniel's neck to touch bare skin.

After a while, Daniel turns his face to him.

“I'm sorry,” he says carefully, and very, very clearly. “But they were killing you, Jack. They were killing all of you.”

Jack stops stroking. Daniel's voice is quiet, desperate. He is answering a question, Jack realizes, but what was the question again?

“Daniel,” he says. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Daniel doesn't answer straight away. Instead, he smiles gently at Jack, and closes his eyes, as if he's completed some tedious assignment, and can now fully relax. He is definitely somewhere else, Jack decides.

“Daniel,” he says. “Talk to me. What's going on?”

The dreamy smile doesn't leave Daniel's face.

“I'm sorry, Jack,” he says. “There was no other way. There were going to kill you, and there was nothing else I could do.” Abruptly, he opens his eyes, and blinks up at Jack. The smile fades, and then turns into a twist of pain, as if Daniel just realized the full extent of what he had done, whatever it was. “It's going to be over soon, Jack. They're all going to--”

And that's where the floor rolls away from under them at last, a violent jolt sending them sliding across the cell, their bodies hitting the opposite wall. Jack blacks out for a moment -- he couldn't fully tuck his chin to shield his head, he was still holding Daniel -- but he recovers in an eyeblink, just in time to see the swirls outside the window flash and fade, and then sparkle with thousands of little lights in deep blackness.

They're in regular space again. Which means they've arrived at wherever they were supposed to arrive. Jack looks around, assessing his options again. The need to escape has suddenly become more urgent.

In the wall opposite the window, there is a dark rectangle of empty air.

Jack lets out a shuddering breath when he realizes what he is looking at.

The cell is open.

~*~

They find Carter and Teal'c a few doors away, lying in two low, angular pods, their heads and backs cushioned in blue, jelly-like substance. They are asleep, or unconscious, Jack can't tell for sure. But with the tubes sticking out of their mouths and small, blinking devices attached to their temples, Jack is reasonably certain they can't be in any place good at the moment.

Daniel is reading the manual before Jack is able to find one, Daniel's fingers tracing the glowing chicken scratches on the side of Carter's pod. Daniel's lips are moving while he reads, and his forehead is creased with effort. Jack can't help but feel the adrenaline rush at the sight -- Daniel may have lost a few marbles along the way, but it's not like he can't get them back; he has done it before.

A moment after, Daniel runs his fingers over the controls, and the pods stop blinking. So do the mind probes. Jack carefully pulls the thin cord from Carter's mouth, while Daniel does the same to Teal'c. The probes come out automatically. They trail a lot of blood behind them, and Carter comes up screaming. Jack holds her down while she struggles, cries, and then pukes all over the pod and the floor, narrowly missing Jack's uniform and boots. Teal'c is slightly grey when he wakes, and it takes him a moment to be able to get up, but he does so without assistance, even though Daniel hovers close beside him -- Teal'c is just stubborn this way.

They wait until the wounds seal themselves, the sticky, blue substance left by the probes congealing along with the blood. Carter has questions as soon as she can open her mouth and not throw up, but Jack deftly avoids any answers. They have no time. Daniel is already out the door, which means they have to follow. Getting separated now would not exactly be the best idea.

The corridors are long and narrow, and the design is not at all like the Goa'uld. The walls are too sparse, the ceilings too low, and there are no glowing torches, which to Jack are always a dead giveaway for a mothership. In fact, it's fairly dark and deserted, and Jack wonders if anyone is even aboard. Daniel seems to be going forward by touch, fingers sliding over the walls, feeling the turns more than seeing them. He moves fast, though, and Jack doesn't know why the haste, but he doesn't ask. Daniel had done something, got something in return -- beyond the lives of his team Jack can't think of a reason. And now Daniel is in a hurry to get somewhere, most probably out of the harm's way, so it's not really a place for Jack to demand explanations.

When Daniel stops at last, it's so abrupt Jack almost barrels straight into him. He leans against Daniel's shoulder, panting after the run along the corridors. Behind him, he can hear Carter and Teal'c catching up, and then a shaky intake of breath, and a _Holy mother of..._ , before he looks up to focus on the sight before him.

They're in a cargo bay, he realizes. A huge, empty cargo bay of what must be a very, very big ship.

Well, empty except for one thing.


	6. Chapter 6

_Find the river._

“They don't understand music,” Daniel says, an eternity later, in the harsh light of the briefing room. To Jack's left, General Hammond frowns briefly, and across the table, Carter looks up, finally more interested than tired. To Jack's right, Teal'c remains impassive. The smell of coffee is rich in the air, and the exhaustion of his team is so palpable Jack can almost taste it.

The whole debriefing has been an exercise in evasive maneuvers. They had no time to agree upon a common version of events -- they barely had time to get a change of clothes after they left the infirmary -- and Hammond wants to know everything; they've been gone for a week, and that's more than enough for the whole universe to be turned upside-down.

So now Jack watches Daniel making up explanations on the fly, pulling them like little fuzzy rabbits out of an invisible magician's hat.

“They don't understand what music is for,” Daniel says, looking in the general direction of the briefing table, but not focusing on anyone in particular. “It merely works as a background to them. They do get the general idea, that is -- that music exists -- but the purpose of it is a mystery. I'm guessing they have nothing parallel in their culture, nothing that would even come close. As a result, they don't mind hearing the same song over and over. Humans, on the other hand...” He pauses, looks around the table, and grimaces into a brief, twisted smile. “Humans tend to go insane when that happens.”

Jack did not go insane. At least that is what he likes to think. He remembers the constant thrum of sounds, though, now that Daniel said so: in the infirmary, in the shop, in the car. Jazz playing just at the edge of his hearing, everywhere he turned, everywhere he was.

But Daniel is a very good liar when he wants to be. He is telling Hammond how he figured their reality was fake in the first place, and the explanation is so neat Jack realizes he almost believes it himself. The insistent loop of the same melody, over and over, barely at the edge of hearing -- this feels like something that would snap Daniel out of it without anyone's help. Jack, on the other hand, is tone-deaf; a textbook case -- he couldn't carry a tune if it was in his pocket. He loves opera because the sheer strength of the sounds lashes into his mind and his soul, strips him to the core. He loves opera for that feeling alone.

But he did not go insane because Daniel was there to pull him back, because Daniel was there to make him remember. And now neither of them, including Carter and Teal'c, can breathe a word about what really happened. They all need to play along. It's their own little fake reality inside of the real one.

“...you're saying that they created a whole world based on what they got from our heads, and they didn't get something as basic as jazz?” Carter is leaning forward in her chair, the expression on her face something between incredulity and laughter. “You've gotta be kidding, Daniel.”

Daniel answers her with a soft smile. “Jazz isn't exactly basic, Sam. Some would say it's the highest form of music, even more complex than the classical--”

“Hey,” Jack says, and that earns him a grin. Daniel's been leading him on, the smart son of a bitch. He's about to take the bait and respond, but Hammond's voice brings them all back to attention. 

“Doctor Jackson, music revelations aside, it seems to me that we have a potentially dangerous enemy out there, with intimate knowledge of the SGC facilities and the way we conduct our operations. And this enemy may have weapons far superior to ours, and may be on their way to ascension right now. Do we have any means to predict their next move?”

Daniel is motionless at the opposite end of the briefing table. Jack wants to cut in, help him somehow -- he knows the general better than Daniel does; Hammond doesn't want to assign blame, he is a man who seeks out possible solutions -- but surely Daniel must have known the question was coming ever since they described the details of their escape: the empty ship, the open doors, the cargo bay, and the stargate, waiting, looking as if had been prepared just for them, a token of gratitude in exchange for services rendered.

Daniel adjusts his glasses and then hugs himself briefly, then apparently thinks better of it, because his lets his arms relax, shape the familiar gestures of explanation.

“We may not have to predict their moves at all, General,” he says slowly. “The thing is...” He pauses to regroup, his forehead creasing, and Jack can't tell if Daniel is preparing some elaborate lie, or just another half-truth. He doesn't care -- all he knows is that he will back Daniel up, no matter what.

“The things is,” Daniel says, “they think that ascension is not a state of the soul, but merely a physical reaction. A state of the brain...”

Across the table, Carter raises her head from her coffee cup. Jack catches a brief frown, which she smooths down at once. Daniel focuses on her briefly, then quickly turns back to Hammond. He is looking the general straight in the eye, without blinking.

“A state of the brain, where certain chemicals get to a certain point, beyond which human capabilities exponentially increase. There is no telling where it can get you, but it can be quite far...” 

Carter doesn't say anything, but Jack can see there is math being done behind her eyes. He can see it in the way she stiffens, in the way she fights with herself not to show anything on her face.

“I gave them the technical knowledge, General,” Daniel is saying. “As much as I could remember...”

Carter winces at that, almost imperceptibly, and Jack decides he can't let this continue. He cuts in, interrupting Daniel's stammered explanation. “What Daniel means, sir, is that the enemy is a bunch of glowing clouds by now.”

Hammond turns to him, and across the table Jack can see Daniel's mouth snap shut. Jack shrugs, keeping his voice light -- this is what he does in situations like this; this is what he knows how to do best. “So, if we're lucky, I'd say the risk of them ever taking interest in our galaxy is minimum, bordering on none.”

Hammond doesn't look convinced. There are always side effects, every time they step through the gate, but they are rarely on the huge, cosmic scale. God knows how many aliens abandoned that ship in favor of the higher plane of existence. And God knows what they are planning to do with their newly acquired skills.

On the far side of the briefing table, Daniel is silent, looking down at his boots. Carter is looking somewhere between Jack and the general. Teal'c is looking at Daniel.

Hammond sighs, gives them all a worried look, like the weight of the world on his shoulders has just gained a few more pounds.

“We'll cross that bridge when we come to it,” is what he finally says. “Dismissed.”

“We always do, sir,” Jack says quietly, and catches Carter's worried glance before he stands up to leave the briefing room.

~*~

An airman drives him home, a nice, not overly chatty guy, who leaves Jack to his own thoughts, while Jack relaxes into the back seat, drifts a little on their way from the mountain. The city is flooded with light; it's early afternoon, and the winter sun is licking the rooftops, melting the shimmering snow. The hum of the engine carries Jack all the way through the busy streets, the headrest comfortably cradling the back of his head, the clean, cool glass of the window separating him from the real world inches away from his face.

Daniel's car is parked in Jack's driveway. The airman doesn't seem to notice -- he bids Jack a goodbye salute and drives smoothly away. Jack stretches his sleepy muscles and walks over to the back of the house.

Daniel is sitting on the stairs of the deck, keys jingling idly in his hand. He looks up when Jack approaches, eyebrows high up on his forehead, and then his face lights up in a soft, genuine smile of recognition; the first real smile Jack has seen on him in days, in weeks of imagined lifetime. It makes Jack all warm on on the inside, it makes him feel alive. He smiles back, and then steps onto the stairs and leads Daniel into the house without a word.

The air in the kitchen is dry and clean; Jack breathes deep, anchoring himself back in the familiar surroundings. Daniel steps in ahead of him. He unzips his jacket, and, while Jack is locking the door and checking the backyard for any signs of intruders, Daniel pulls off his sweater, unzips his jeans and leans back against the closed kitchen door. When Jack turns to him, he is already touching himself, eyes shut -- an open invitation nobody in their right mind would refuse.

Jack stands there for a while, motionless, savoring the moment. The sun is painting his kitchen in a living light -- purple, orange and gold. His head is already swimming in the familiar vertigo of sexual arousal.

It feels dangerously like dreaming.

Jack swallows. “Daniel,” he says, his voice raspy and low.

But Daniel smiles again, not opening his eyes. “Yes, Jack,” he says. And then, answering the question Jack didn't ask aloud, “I'm real.” He tightens his hand, grimacing, his hips moving forward in slow, minute thrusts. “You can touch me,” he breathes. “Please touch me.”

So Jack does.

Daniel's mouth tastes better than anything, soft and pliant and hungry. His teeth graze Jack's upper lip, and he lets out a breathless groan when Jack squeezes the naked flesh between his legs. Hot and hard and slick to the touch, Daniel is moving into Jack's hand, is laughing, is moaning into Jack's mouth. Jack contemplates going down on him for the briefest of moments -- he is starved for the taste and the smell, starved for the sounds Daniel makes when he is being blown -- but his kneecaps twinge at the very thought of the kitchen floor tiles. He squeezes Daniel hard, once, and then slides his other hand to the back of Daniel's neck, pulls him close.

“Table. Now,” he says, biting Daniel's lip. “Don't make me hurt you.”

Daniel groans at that, and obeys without protest. Like a blind man he lets himself be led by Jack's touch, by Jack's hand sliding into his hair, digging into his nape. He levers himself up onto the table, the muscles in his arms working, and scoots a little back from the edge, hooks his ankles behind Jack's thighs, pulls Jack closer. Jack places his hand in the center of Daniel's chest. Daniel is still in his t-shirt, but Jack doesn't want him to take it off yet. Later, maybe, when they're in the bedroom, comfortable and warm and sedated with release and exhaustion.

“Come on,” Jack says, pressing the heel of his hand against Daniel's sternum. “On your back.”

Daniel complies; he has no reason not to. He squirms a little on the hard, slippery surface, finds a comfortable position. His hands move back to his groin. “Jack...”

“You can start without me,” Jack tells him, patting Daniel's thigh, and then goes to the cupboard over the sink to get the bottle of oil. When he comes back, Daniel looks like he's already somewhere else, his mind fueled on the reality of being naked, exposed, waiting for Jack to come take him. When Jack moves in between his legs, Daniel raises his knees to hook his legs over Jack's shoulders.

He makes a strained sound of pain when Jack pushes in, but his ankles don't loosen their deadlock behind Jack's neck. His eyes are shut tight; he is holding himself with one hand, the other grasping the edge of the table for leverage. Jack waits a moment to let Daniel adjust, waits for any sign of discomfort or protest. He doesn't get it. Not that he ever does, anyway. He takes a breath and starts moving.

They do it slowly, Jack thrusting careful and deep, and Daniel just stroking at first, then jerking himself hard, with his eyes closed, gulping air with shallow breaths and soundless exhalations. Jack watches him thump the back of his head against the table, bite his lip, make incoherent pleas -- do all the little things Daniel does while he's being fucked. Jack watches, pushing in, pulling out, until his own vision begins to blur, and his focus shifts inwards, back to his own pleasure.

When he comes, the orgasm is like a slow shaking of the ground, breaking through him like a wave, making him lean hard against the table to take the weight off his trembling legs, making him push deep into Daniel and _hold_ , his face low over Daniel's chest, his nostrils filled with the heat and the sweat of Daniel's straining body.

Daniel comes soon after that, clenching and moaning, pulling at himself at a frantic pace, and then freezing with both hands curled over his groin. Jack resurfaces from the haze he's been floating in, and watches Daniel float back down with a sigh, a tremble, and a final relaxing of muscles. He eases Daniel's legs from his shoulders and pulls out with a groan. Daniel shivers one last time and then lies still, breathing deep, his legs hanging off the edge of the table.

Jack pulls back a chair, sits down. After a while, he reaches to stroke Daniel's thigh with his open palm.

“Mmm,” Daniel says to the ceiling.

Jack nods. “Yeah. That would be a good way to put it.”

He hears Daniel's soft huff of laughter.

“When the world ends,” Daniel says conversationally, “don't bother to wake me.”

~*~

The world doesn't end. At least not for the next couple of hours. Daniel eventually gets up from the table and navigates into the shower. Later, when Jack enters the bedroom, Daniel is spread out on the covers, the towel still around his hips. He doesn't wake when Jack pushes him a little to the side to make room for himself.

They sleep long into the late hours of the evening. Around midnight, Jack wakes up with a jerk. His hand automatically seeks out Daniel's presence beside him, and when his fingers touch warm skin, he relaxes back into the sheets.

“M'ck?” Daniel murmurs, a soft, sleepy exhalation, muffled by the pillow. He still hasn't moved from his initial position, right where he fell, flat on his stomach, with his arms on either side of his head.

“Shh,” Jack says. He reaches to stroke Daniel's forearm. “Go back to sleep.”

“M'kay,” Daniel agrees. He doesn't say anything else. His breathing evens out after a short while.

Jack is lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. His mind wanders.

He doesn't want to go back, but it doesn't seem to be his conscious choice any more; his brain has better ideas. Daniel is sleeping soundly at his side, warm and sated, but Jack can't help but see that other Daniel, ephemeric and gold, shining with inner light, sunrays dancing on every inch of his skin.

They knew, Jack thinks. They knew exactly what to tell me. What image to show me so I would follow, so I would listen and do as I was told and never bother to wake up. Sanctuary. The place between dreaming and waking. Such a pull, such temptation in that sweet little moment.

And that room, with the jazz concerts at night. I could have easily stayed there. We could have had our little sanctuary back there, too, forgetting the world every time we woke up, every time we looked out the window.

Why did I even get out? If I weren't getting sick, if it weren't for Carter, we would have never guessed what was happening and why. I would have just come back, again and again, played my part in that ugly little show, making Daniel forget while trying to make him remember.

Was it Daniel, tainting our little fantasy with blood?

“It wasn't me, Jack.”

Daniel's whisper sends a jolt through him, and Jack realizes he must have said something. Has he been thinking out loud?

Daniel's hand slides on the sheet, fingers finding Jack's face, his eyebrows, his temples. The bed dips as Daniel pushes his body closer to Jack's. The smell of Daniel's sweat has gotten sour, and his breath is acrid against Jack's nostrils; the odors of a real body at night.

“You did it yourself,” Daniel says, stroking his cheek, running his hands over Jack's lips. The touch tickles; Jack opens his mouth to let Daniel's fingers in. Daniel lets out a little, breathy moan, his breath gusting over Jack's forehead. “You needed a reason,” Daniel murmurs, stroking in and out of Jack's mouth. “You needed a deadline. That's why you bled each time you came for me, each time you went back. You didn't want to give into the temptation, so you made yourself a reason to get me.”

Jack lets go of Daniel's fingers, takes hold of Daniel's wrist and pushes Daniel's hand down, under the waistband of his boxers. Daniel scoots closer, shifts a little down, wraps his hand obediently around Jack and starts stroking. Jack relaxes back into the pillow. “How do you know?” he asks, already half-dreaming.

Daniel laughs against his shoulder. “I don't.” His hand is moving slowly, rhythmically, and Jack's mind is starting to drift. He begins to forget the question altogether, when Daniel speaks again.

“But I can't think of any other reason.”

~*~

The next day, SG-12 comes back from a routine mission, and they smell of rotten flesh and drip blue fluid off their uniforms. Jack gets a phone call at 0700, and barely has time to disentangle himself from the sticky warmth of Daniel's limbs.

On base, Carter has been awake since 0600, analyzing the multitude of samples -- she never went back home in the first place -- and Teal'c is out in the field, counting the dead. Hammond is slightly green around the edges, but he takes in the situation with his never-faltering calm.

“We've counted about five hundred bodies total,” a young lieutenant is reporting to him when Jack arrives. “As far as we know, they are all dead, but we can't tell for sure. They're aliens...” He stammers a little, as if not sure what he is supposed to say next. “They keep coming, sir. Lightning flashes, all around the gate, right there in the middle of a field, sir.”

Hammond nods, as if he has the situation totally under control, despite it being so obviously _not_. “Keep searching, Lieutenant. Report to me if you find anyone alive.”

“Yes, sir.”

When the lieutenant leaves, Hammond turns to Jack.

“What's the situation, General?”

“Situation? The situation, Colonel, is that we have hundreds of dead aliens falling out of the sky. I'd be very glad if somebody could tell me what the hell is going on!”

~*~

Later that day, on the back porch, Jack turns a cold bottle of beer in his hands. Beside him, wrapped in a jacket and with a scarf around his neck, Daniel is silent. From time to time Jack can see a glitter of glass as Daniel raises his own bottle to his lips. It's his third bottle.

Carter didn’t look Jack in the eye when she presented the total number of casualties. She said she’d have a full report in the morning, after she'd cleared a couple of things with Daniel; her theory was nearly complete. Jack didn’t ask her what things, didn’t ask her what theory -- they both knew he didn’t need to. 

In the apartment that was never there, Daniel stood naked on the balcony, waiting for Jack to wake him up. Jazz flowed through the open window, gentle and perfect and beautiful, and exactly the same every night. _“You know I live here. You found me. You knocked on my door.”_

In the room that was never there, Carter’s voice was clear and steady, while Jack was going insane, a caged animal in a space too small to breathe. _“Back there, Daniel said something that made me think.”_

In the debriefing, Daniel didn’t meet their eyes, and Carter connected the dots in an eyeblink -- the _how_ to the _why_ , the missing ingredient. _“They think that ascension is not a state of the soul, but merely a physical reaction.”_

Jack takes a pull of his beer. His toes are getting cold. The winter is almost gone, but in the evening the temperature still drops below the freezing point.

He connected the dots too, and he had to stop it before Daniel’s explanation turned into a confession. No need to put things like that on tape; they had a tendency to turn on you sooner or later. For now it was enough that they were all alive.

Jack turns the bottle, warms it between his hands. “They don't understand music, huh?” he says, after a while.

Daniel doesn't say anything. He raises his bottle to his lips again, and drinks the rest of the beer. When the bottle is empty, he sets it on the deck with a soft thunk.

They sit together in silence. Around them, the neighborhood is going to sleep, exactly as it does every night.

~*~

_Gdansk, Autumn 2005 -- March 2006_


End file.
